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Dennis Prager. What Does Diversity Have to Do with
Science?, Monsters and The Death
Penalty, Where Are You, Martin Luther
King?

Prager Diversity and Science

Dennis Prager talks to Heather Mac Donald, fellow at the
Manhattan Institute and contributing editor to City Journal. She
teaches the newest PragerU video, “What Does Diversity Have to Do
with Science?”

Do you care about the race of your doctor, or the gender
of the person who built the bridge you drive across? The latest
trend across STEM fields claims you should. Heather Mac Donald,
Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The Diversity
Delusion, explains where these destructive ideas are coming
from.

A half-century after his death, Martin Luther King, Jr.
is as revered as ever. But have we been following his example, or
merely paying lip service to his ideas? Jason Riley, Senior Fellow
at the Manhattan Institute, weighs in. Donate today to
PragerU!

Are there circumstances under which a murderer deserves
the death penalty? In other words, should capital punishment be
abolished or not? Dennis Prager explains.

Script: There are almost no issues where I don’t
understand both sides: taxation, the size of government, abortion,
socialism, capitalism. As strongly as I feel about any issue, I
understand the opposition. But there is an exception: the death
penalty for murder. Here, the gulf is unbridgeable between those of
us who believe that some murderers – and I emphasize some murderers
– should be put to death and those who believe that no murderer
should ever be put to death. Take this example: On the afternoon of
July 23, 2007, in the town of Cheshire, Connecticut, two men broke
into the home of Dr. William Petit, his wife Jennifer and his two
daughters. The men beat Dr. Petit nearly to death with a baseball
bat; one of the men raped the doctor’s wife; and the other man
sexually assaulted their 11 year-old daughter, Michaela. The two
men then strangled Mrs. Petit to death, tied down the two daughters
on beds, doused them with gasoline, and, while the girls were still
alive, set the house on fire. Dr. Petit survived, but his wife and
daughters did not. Those opposed to capital punishment believe that
these two men have a right to keep their lives. So, is there
anything a person can do to deserve the death penalty? To those
opposed to capital punishment, the answer is no. In fact, many
opponents of capital punishment believe that killing murderers is
the same as murder. You heard me right – most opponents equate the
murder of an innocent family with putting the murderers of that
family to death. Opponents of capital punishment also argue that
keeping all murderers alive sanctifies the value of human life. But
the opposite is true. Keeping every murderer alive cheapens human
life because it belittles murder. That’s easily proven. Imagine
that the punishment for murder were the same as the punishment for
driving over the speed limit. Wouldn’t that belittle murder and
thereby cheapen human life? Of course, it would. Society teaches
how bad an action is by the punishment it metes out. And what about
the pain inflicted on the loved ones of those murdered? For most
people, their suffering is immeasurably increased knowing that the
person who murdered their family member or friend – and who, in
many cases, inflicted unimaginable terror on that person – is alive
and being cared for. Of course, putting the murderer to death
doesn’t bring back their loved one, but it sure does provide some
sense of justice. That’s why Dr. Petit, a physician whose life is
devoted to saving lives, wants the murderers of his wife and
daughters put to death. In his words, death "is really the only
true just punishment for certain heinous and depraved murders." Is
the doctor wrong? Is he immoral? Well, if you think capital
punishment is immoral, then Dr. Petit is immoral. And what about
opponents’ argument that an innocent person may be executed? This
argument may be sincerely held, but it’s not honest. Why? Because
opponents of capital punishment oppose the death penalty even when
there is absolute proof of the murderer’s guilt. If there were a
video of a man burning a family alive, opponents of capital
punishment would still oppose taking that man’s life. For the
complete script, visit
https://www.prageru.com/videos/death-...

Prager University Video-

What Does Diversity Have to Do with
Science?

Script: The promoters of identity politics—the idea that
we are primarily defined by our race and gender—have taken over the
humanities and social sciences. That’s bad. But not as bad as this:
They are moving in on “STEM” – science, technology, engineering and
math. “All across the country,” a UCLA scientist reports, “the big
question is: how can we promote more women and minorities by
‘changing’ (i.e., lowering) the requirements we had previously set
for graduate level study?” The National Science Foundation (NSF), a
federal agency that funds university research, exemplifies this
approach. Progress in science, the NSF argues, requires a “diverse
STEM workforce.” Why this is the case they don’t bother to say.
Somehow, NSF-backed scientists managed to rack up more than 200
Nobel Prizes before the agency realized that scientific progress
depends on “diversity.” No matter: in July 2017, it awarded $1
million to the University of New Hampshire and two other
institutions to develop a “bias-awareness intervention tool.”
Another $2 million went to the Department of Aerospace Engineering
at Texas A&M to “remediate microaggressions and implicit
biases.” The science diversity charade, as I discuss in my book The
Diversity Delusion, wastes extraordinary amounts of time and money
that could be going into basic research and its real-world
application. If that were its only consequence, the cost would be
high enough. But identity politics is altering the standards for
scientific competence and the way future scientists are trained.
“Diversity” is now an explicit job qualification in the STEM
fields. The physics department at UC San Diego advertised an
assistant-professor position with a “specific emphasis on
contributions to diversity,” such as a candidate’s “awareness of
inequities faced by underrepresented groups.” Solving the mystery
of dark energy apparently now takes a back-seat to social justice.
Maybe it was a coincidence, but all five candidates on UC San
Diego’s short list were females. If traditional standards are
keeping women and minorities out of STEM fields, it stands to
reason that changing standards must be the way to get them in. Or
maybe standards are just another expression of the white patriarchy
and thus no longer relevant. An introductory chemistry course at UC
Berkeley reflects the new “culturally sensitive pedagogy.” A
primary goal, according to its teachers, is to disrupt the
“racialized and gendered construct of scientific brilliance,” which
defines “good science” as getting all the right answers. This same
diversity obsession extends to medical schools—not a happy thought
when they wheel you into the operating room for emergency surgery.
The promoters of identity politics are literally playing with our
lives. Medical schools admissions committees are now told to
overlook the low test scores of black and Hispanic applicants in
favor of a more “holistic” approach. From 2013 to 2016, medical
schools admitted 57 percent of black applicants with a low medical
college admission test score of 24 to 26, but only 8 percent of
whites and 6 percent of Asians with those same low scores,
according to Claremont McKenna professor Frederick Lynch. For the
complete script, visit
https://www.prageru.com/videos/what-d...

Script: It’s been 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. was shot to death on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, and
over the decades he has become one of the most revered figures in
American history. There is an impressive memorial to him in
Washington, DC, and a museum celebrating his life in Atlanta,
Georgia. Countless schools and boulevards have been named after
him, and a national holiday is dedicated to his memory. How is it,
then, that so much of his legacy—what he hoped to pass on to the
future—has been lost? King wanted equality under the law and said,
famously, that people ought to judge one another based on
character, not skin color. But he also believed that blacks had an
important role to play in their own advancement. The black civil
rights battles in America are now over, and King’s side won. The
best indication of that may be that King has had no real successor.
If black Americans were still faced with legitimate threats to
civil rights—such as legal discrimination or voter
disenfranchisement—it’s likely that leaders of King’s caliber would
have emerged to carry on the fight. Instead, what we have today are
pretenders who have turned the civil rights movement into an
industry, if not a racket. And what have these racketeers
accomplished? A lot for themselves, and very little for their
constituents. Racial gaps in income, education, and home ownership
were narrowing in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. But after King was
replaced as the spokesman for black America by the likes of Jesse
Jackson, Al Sharpton and others, these gaps began to widen in the
1970s, ’80s and ’90s. This suggests that the racial disparities
that continue today aren’t driven by whatever racism that still
exists, despite all the claims to the contrary from progressives
and their allies in the media. It also suggests that black
culture—attitudes toward marriage, education, work and the rule of
law—plays a much larger role than the left wants to acknowledge.
More marches won’t address fatherless homes. More sit-ins won’t
lower black crime rates or narrow the school achievement gap.
Electing more black politicians and appointing more black
government officials can’t compensate for these cultural
deficiencies, either. Black mayors, congressmen, senators, police
chiefs and school superintendents have become commonplace since the
1970s. Even the election of a black president—twice—failed to close
the racial divide in many key measures. Black-white differences in
poverty, home ownership, and incomes all grew wider under President
Obama. Discussion of antisocial behavior in poor black communities,
let alone the possibility that it plays a significant role in
racial inequality, has become another casualty of the post-’60s
era. King and other black leaders at the time spoke openly about
the need for more responsible behavior. After remarking on the
disproportionately high inner-city crime rates, King told a black
congregation in St. Louis that “We’ve got to do something about our
moral standards. We know that there are many things wrong in the
white world,” he said, “but there are many things wrong in the
black world, too. We can’t keep on blaming the white man. There are
things we must do for ourselves.” For the complete script, visit
https://www.prageru.com/videos/where-...

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